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The Crowded Mind of Johnny Depp

by Patti Smith
Photos by Annie Liebovitz
Vanity Fair
January 2011

Captain Jack Sparrow,
Willy Wonka, the Mad Hatter, Edward Scissorhands, the Earl of Rochester
. . . How
many characters can Johnny Depp keep inside himself? And is it safe
to do so? After wrapping this month’s
The Tourist—in which he plays an
American math teacher who becomes a pawn for Angelina Jolie—he has
plunged back
into Caribbean-pirate mode. Friend and rock legend Patti Smith finds
him on
set, guitar in hand, for a free-floating tour of the inner Depp.

Johnny
Depp is on set
at Pinewood Studios,
outside London, for the last days of
shooting the next
Pirates of the Caribbean movie—On Stranger
Tides. We sit on the floor
of his trailer, a brocaded lair worthy of Captain Jack Sparrow, strewn
with the
talismans of his real-life counterpart: Johnny’s blue lenses; faded
bandannas;
beat-up boots; Viper Room cap; silver skull rings in a bowl; a copy of
Keith
Richards’s Life atop a script for Dark
Shadows; and folded notes from his
8-year-old son, Jack, and his 11-year-old daughter, Lily Rose. There is
an old
Stella acoustic guitar that he cannot resist picking up and strumming
quietly.
Johnny is working 12-hour shifts. The day begins in the makeup trailer,
long
before morning rush hour. Downtime is divided between press calls,
stacks of
pictures to sign, scripts to read, and family responsibilities—ever
present and
ever embraced. There is also the occasional hour of stolen sleep, often
with
his guitar resting on his chest.

I first met Johnny a few years ago, backstage at the Orpheum
Theater, in Los Angeles, where I was performing with my band. When he
laughed,
I noticed his gapped teeth, a detail borrowed from the engaging smile
of his
companion, Vanessa Paradis, in preparation for his role as the
frenetically
pure Mad Hatter, in Tim Burton’s Alice in
Wonderland. I had just seen The
Libertine for the third time, in which Johnny hauntingly
channels John
Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester, who in 1675 wrote the infamous “Satyr
Against
Mankind.” As the movie begins, Wilmot says to the viewer, “You will not
like
me.” But Johnny himself is in fact very likable, his magnetic energy
infused
with a certain shyness. In conversation, Johnny and I, both bookworms,
moved
easily from Wilmot to Baudelaire to Hunter S. Thompson. We were dressed
alike—holey dungarees, battered leather jacket, timeworn flannel shirt.
My son,
Jackson, a guitarist, who was with me, noted that Johnny seemed more
like a
musician than an actor.

Later, visiting Johnny’s Los Angeles home, I became
acquainted with his rare books and other precious objects. He never
says he
owns any of these things, preferring to call himself their guardian. He
is the
guardian of John Dillinger’s derringer, a manuscript in the hand of
Arthur
Rimbaud, and Jack Kerouac’s last typewriter. Johnny is down to earth,
yet also
seems to operate in another universe. Time is precious—but also
worthless. He
has a bit of the Godfather in him—and also a bit of the bum. He is as
rebellious as Rochester, as loving as the Hatter, and as ill-behaved as
Jack
Sparrow. He is also intensely loyal. In Puerto Rico, as he was filming
the late
Hunter S. Thompson’s novel The Rum Diary,
the spirit of Hunter, whom Johnny loved, permeated the atmosphere. A
director’s
chair was emblazoned with Hunter’s name and small rituals were carried
out in
his honor. The hours were long, and the jungle was moonlit and
mosquito-infested. Johnny’s character—dark shades, hair slicked
back—was a
rum-soaked journalist named Paul Kemp.

At the London premiere of Alice in Wonderland,
I had my first glimpse of the character who
would supersede Paul Kemp—Frank Tupelo, the bemused math teacher in
Johnny’s new
movie The Tourist. Johnny does not
watch his own movies, so that night he broke ranks to say hello to fans
gathered outside in the rain, later joining the celebration hosted by
the
whimsical genius Tim Burton. After hours, I found Johnny sitting alone
in a
small alcove with a glass of wine before him. He was in a tuxedo. He
had grown
a beard, and his dark hair was longer than usual. His pale skin was
illuminated
by a single light, and he had thrown back his head and closed his eyes.
He had
left the Hatter and Kemp behind and was already slipping into the
interior
world of Frank Tupelo. In that moment I noticed for the first time how
handsome
he is.

Within days of the Alice
premiere he was unpacking in Venice, ensconced in a private section of
a hotel
tucked away at the end of a canal, steps from the Palazzo Fortuny. The
mystical
light of Venice and the misadventures of Johnny and his Tourist
co-star, Angelina Jolie, were about to be captured for the
screen. The movie is stylish, a thrilling caper in the manner of North
by Northwest. The schedule was
punishing and the weather a challenge—hot by day but very chilly for
night
shoots. During a midnight break we ate pizza with our coats on, then
Johnny was
whisked away for a long shot down a fog-shrouded canal, chained inside
a water
taxi. Angelina awaited her cue, a hooded parka concealing the glamour
that
would soon emerge. Brad Pitt was minding the children, but her mother
radar was
always on. Paparazzi were kept at bay, but hovered relentlessly.

Now, in London, as winter sets in, Johnny is again consumed
by Captain Jack. He will meet his match in yet another dark beauty,
PenÚlope
Cruz—more than ready to spar with the Sparrow. At Pinewood, heavy mists
descend
upon the bogs, pools, and vines that create the physical atmosphere
surrounding
the much-sought-after Fountain of Youth. Johnny’s boy, Jack, who has
the gaze
of his mother and the stance of his father, accompanies the Captain on
set, but
not until jacket, cap, and scarf are located. Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory was shot here at Pinewood, but
the river of chocolate is now gone. In its place there are strange
waters
teeming with mysterious organisms. It is damp and chilly, and the scene
I
witness is a mix of swordplay and slapstick. Afterward, the dresser
takes away
the Captain’s locks—a heavy tangle of dreads and bones. Johnny’s dark
silky
hair is held flat in tight braids. There is a set change and a lull, so
we sit
on the floor of the trailer, a rare moment of peace, with his boy safe
at hand.
Johnny presses record on the little tape machine. He smiles a smile
that is his
own. He is just Johnny, and, in truth, Johnny is character enough.

Smith:
Anytime I’ve
seen you—in a trailer, at your home, in a hotel room—you always have at
least
one guitar with you. You sometimes talk while strumming a guitar. How
connected
are you with music?

Depp: It’s still my first love as much as it ever was, since
I was a little kid and first picked up a guitar and tried to figure out
how to
make the thing go. Going into acting was an odd deviation from a
particular
road that I was on in my late teens, early 20s, because I had no
desire, no
interest, really, in it at all. I was a musician and I was a guitarist,
and
that’s what I wanted to do.

But because of that deviation, and because I don’t do it for
a living, maybe I still have been able to maintain that kind of
innocent love
for it. The weird thing is I think I approach my work the same way I
approached
guitar playing—looking at a character like a song. If you think of
expression
musically—it goes from wherever it comes from inside to your fingers,
and on to
that fretboard, and then on to the amplifier, through whatever. It’s
the same
kind of thing that’s required here, with acting: What was the author’s
intent?
What can I add to it that maybe someone else won’t add to it? It’s not
necessarily a question of how many notes, but a question of what do the
notes
express and what does a slight bend do.

I overheard
someone in your camp—maybe it was on the set of The Rum Diary,
or maybe it was The
Tourist—talking about how eager you were to get back to
Captain Jack, and
about how much Jack was like you. How do you feel when you enter into
the skin
of Captain Jack?

Free—free to be irreverent. I think it’s like
unlocking a part of yourself and freeing this part of yourself to just
be—what
do they call it?—the id, or whatever, just to be .
. . just to be,
under whatever circumstances. The closest thing that I can compare it
to was
having known Hunter Thompson really well—we were very, very close—and
witnessing him, because I studied him so deeply and lived with him for
a period
of time to try to become Raoul Duke, to try to become Hunter. There was
a
certain freedom that he had, or control, or command of the
situation—there was
never anything that he couldn’t get through. Verbally he was just so
clever and
so quick and so free, and he didn’t give a rat’s ass about what the
repercussions were.

He was the
revolutionary’s Johnny Carson. I mean, he always had a punch line.

Somebody once asked him, “What is the sound of one
hand clapping, Hunter?,” and he smacked him. Captain Jack was kind of
like that
for me, an opening up of this part of yourself that is somewhat—you
know, there
is a little Bugs Bunny in all of us.

Young kids
love—really love—the Captain. And who is more mystically mischievous,
and
brilliant in his own way, than Bugs Bunny?

At the time, I had been watching nothing but cartoons
with my daughter—with Lily Rose. I hadn’t seen a grown-up film in
forever. It
was all cartoons, all those great old Warner Bros. things. And I
thought,
Jesus, the parameters here are so much wider and more forgiving in
terms of
character. These cartoon characters could get away with anything. And I
thought, They’re beloved by 3-year-olds and 93-year-olds. How do you do
that?
How do you get there? That was kind of the start.

I also see a
little bit of John Barrymore in Captain Jack. There’s humor and often a
feyness. He keeps his intelligence in his own little treasure chest. He
doesn’t
really want people to comprehend that he knows everything.

He has already assessed the situation.

What were you
reading to inform you about Captain Jack’s life, or his lifestyle?

I was reading a lot of books about early pirates.
There was one book in particular that was really helpful called Under
the Black Flag. You realize that
those guys were—you either loved it or you were press-ganged and you
didn’t.
One of the things that helped me most with Captain Jack was a book by
Bernard
Moitessier, and it’s where I found the last line for the first Pirates
movie. The writers were stumped,
and they’d say, Well, what about this? And nothing seemed to click. I
was
reading this Moitessier book on sailing the earth, and he had written
about how
the ultimate for a sailor was the horizon, and to be able to attain
that
horizon, which you never get to, which is why it keeps pushing you
forward. I thought,
That’s it! That’s it! So I went to them and said, I’ve got a line for
you:
“Bring me that horizon.” And they looked at it and went, Nah, that’s
not it.
But about 45 minutes later they came to me and went, That’s the line.

Because
delivered in a certain way . . .

Yeah—“Bring me that horizon.” That’s what they all
want. That’s what all those guys want. Get me that horizon. And you
never get
there.

How did Disney
feel about Captain Jack? He does have a wisp of controversy about him.

It was a totally different regime over there at the
time. They couldn’t stand him. They just couldn’t stand him. I think it
was
Michael Eisner, the head of Disney at the time, who was quoted as
saying, “He’s
ruining the movie.” It was that extreme—memos, and paper trails, and
madness,
and phone calls, and agents, and lawyers, and people screaming, and me
getting
phone calls direct from, you know, upper-echelon Disney-ites, going,
What’s
wrong with him? Is he, you know, like some kind of weird simpleton? Is
he
drunk? By the way, is he gay? Is he this? Is he that? And so I actually
told
this woman who was the Disney-ite that called me about all that stuff,
and
asked me the questions, I said to her, “But didn’t you know that all my
characters are gay?” Which really made her nervous.

The role of
Frank in The Tourist is so different
from the Hatter or the Captain—more subtle. Characters like him—who
seem to
have less that you can grasp—I would think would be harder to do.

The great challenge of a character like Frank, for me,
is that he’s Everyman, you know, Mr. Ordinary—not a simpleton, just
ordinary.
He’s a math teacher. I was always fascinated by people who are
considered
completely normal, because I find them the weirdest of all.

So where did
you find Frank?

He was sort of a combo platter for me, from certain
people I’ve known over the years. I knew an accountant who would
travel—he was
super-straight, very, very straight guy—and he would travel all over
the world
to photograph places that had street signs or businesses that had the
same name
as his last name. He’d go to Italy, he’d go to Shanghai, and he’d take
photographs. That was his kick.

He had an
eccentricity that no one sees. Everyone sees the eccentricities of an
artist.
But eccentricities like Frank’s are so subtle and so particular.

It was guys like that that I thought about. Frank, for
example, who had quit smoking, could be absolutely fascinated with that
electronic
cigarette, and the moving parts of it, and being able to really explain
it to
someone in great detail.

Frank has some
really nice pajamas. Cotton. Light blue. Do you wear pajamas?

Occasionally I do. Occasionally, when it’s cold.

Do they have
feet on them?

I don’t have the feet. I have not gone for footed
pajamas yet. However, I’m not—I wouldn’t, you know, withdraw the idea.
One of
the finest nights of sleep that I ever had, after a huge workload, was
in a
pair of pajamas that Julian Schnabel gave me. I hadn’t worn pajamas
since I was
about three. And I actually slept in them. They were somehow so
comforting. His
wife made them. That was the moment when I became completely square.

Well, I don’t
know. I’ve also seen your Miami Dolphins socks—although that might be a
secret.

You have a pair, too! There are no secrets now. We’re
in this together.

We have
another dirty little secret. A Monkees song.

Oh, “Daydream Believer.” It’s a great song. I don’t
care what anyone says.

“Daydream
Believer” came on the radio when we were driving to the set. It was a
moment of
total happiness. It’s a pure, happy little song. What bad thing can you
say
about it?

I know, I know. It’s O.K. to like “Daydream Believer.”
There’s nothing wrong with a guilty pleasure from time to time. Know
what I
mean? It’s “Daydream Believer.” I’m justifying my own flag.

A Monkee and I
have the same birthday . . .

Is it Micky Dolenz?

No, it’s
actually two Monkees. Mike and Davy. I used to be horrified by that
fact, but
now I don’t care anymore. I have the same birthday as Bo Diddley,
Rudyard
Kipling, and Paul Bowles . . . and two Monkees.

That’s pretty good. That’s a good balance.

Getting back
to The Tourist, from what I saw, on
set, the atmosphere seemed fraught with mischief.

Angelina—we’d met basically on this film. Meeting her
and getting to know her was a real pleasant surprise, and I say that
with the
best meaning, just in the sense that she’s this quite, you know,
famous, and, I
mean, poor thing, dogged by paparazzi, her and her husband, Brad, you
know, and
all their kids, and their wonderful life, but they are plagued by . . .
so you
don’t know what to expect, really. You don’t know what she might be
like—if she
has any sense of humor at all. I was so pleased to find that she is
incredibly
normal, and has a wonderfully kind of dark, perverse sense of humor.
And
because here we are working together in this situation where you could
really—there
are times when you see how ridiculous is this life, how ludicrous it
is, you
know, leaving your house every morning and being followed by paparazzi,
or
having to hide, sometimes not even being able to talk to each other in
public
because someone will take a photograph and it will be misconstrued and
turned
into some other shit.

On set, I told
her that she looked beautiful, and she explained to me about all the
different
people it takes to make that possible—as if she really isn’t. I found
Angelina
interesting. If you talk about her beauty, she scoffs. If you mention a
cause,
she invites you to take a stand.

That’s the thing with Angie. I mean, you look at her
and you go, O.K.: “goddess,” “movie icon.” In 30 years people will
still be
going, “Oh, my God.” Elizabeth Taylor kind of territory. And she has
got that,
no question about it. But, like anything, it’s the way she deals with
it. She’s
so down to earth, and so bright, and so real. I’ve had the honor and
the
pleasure and gift of having known Elizabeth Taylor for a number of
years. Who’s
a real broad. You know, you sit down with her, she slings hash, she
sits there
and cusses like a sailor, and she’s hilarious. Angie’s got the same
kind of
thing, you know, the same approach.

Something I’ve
always wondered about is: these people that you become for us, or make
flesh in
a film—do they revisit you ever? Are you able to discard them? What
happens to
them?

They’re all still there, which on some level can’t be
the healthiest thing in the world. But, no, they’re all still there. I
always
picture it as this chest of drawers in your body—Ed Wood is in one, the
Hatter
is in another, Scissorhands is in another. They stick with you. Hunter
is
certainly in there—you know, Raoul Duke. The weirdest thing is that I
can
access them. They’re still very close to the surface.

It must be
difficult when you have multiple personalities in one of them, like the
Hatter
has. What does he say, “It’s crowded in here”?

“I don’t like it in here. It’s terribly crowded.” But
they all, somehow, have their place. They have come to terms with each
other, I
suppose.

When you’re
playing someone—when you’re really deep within a character—have you
ever had a
dream that you felt was not your dream? Do your characters dream within
you?

I’ve certainly had dreams where I was the character.
Sweeney was like that. There were a lot of dark Sweeney dreams. And
certainly The Libertine, playing John Wilmot.

I would think
that Wilmot would be the one who would most desire to rear his head. He
was a
real human being. It’s one thing to interpret a character in literature
or
someone in fiction. But to have to channel someone who was a living
person. Did
you find that process different?

It’s definitely different. The first thing is the
responsibility. You have a responsibility to that person and the legacy
and
memory of that person. So especially playing someone like John Wilmot,
the Earl
of Rochester, because I always felt he was this great, great poet who
was never
acknowledged as a great poet, but looked upon as a satirist or some
silly guy
who hung around the court of King Charles II. I never believed he got
his due.
He was a renegade, a brilliant poet who was incredibly brave.

I felt this very strong responsibility to play him right—so
much so that I became obsessed. I read everything. I knew everything
about him.
I went to the places he’d lived. I went to the place where he died. I
perused
his actual letters in the British Library and found his words and made
notes
and used them in the script. Without wanting to sound all kind of New
Agey, I
do believe that he paid me at least a few visits.

When you
spouted a few lines of poetry to Samantha Morton, who played Elizabeth
Barry in
the movie—that was my introduction to Wilmot’s work, to his poetry. And
I
noticed in Alice, when the Hatter
recites “Jabberwocky,” that you have a gift for giving us the full
measure of a
poet’s work. It is really quite difficult. Could you imagine doing a
recording
of works of poetry?

I don’t know. It’s daunting, because you don’t know
exactly . . . I mean, you can decipher the intent, and you can kind of
swim
around in the guts of it, but you just don’t know how the poet would
have
wanted it read.

Yes, but that’s
no different than Glenn Gould having to anticipate how Bach would want
his work
played. I thought the Hatter’s reading of “Jabberwocky” was luminous.
Yesterday
you read me a poem written by the Elephant Man. I didn’t know he wrote
poetry.
The poem you recited was heartbreaking. How did you come to find it?

I made an appointment at the hospital where they had
his remains. His skeleton is there, a plaster mask is there, and his
hat and
veil and all this other stuff is there. And right on the wall next to
him is
this gorgeous poem that he wrote about himself and about his life:
“Dragging
this vile body / Round the years / I am not what first appears / A
senseless
freak / Devoid of hope or tears.” This guy was deep, and so, so gifted.

I’ve seen The Libertine a
number of times. The
cinematography, the direction, the script—it was all so beautiful. The
costumes, the casting, the women—they were superb. John Malkovich was a
great
person for you to work off of. But it seemed buried as a film.

It was buried, no question. It was buried horribly. It
was a conflict within the ranks.

I wanted to go to the artist Banksy, the English graffiti
artist. I was going to make a plea to him. What I wanted was the image,
the
spray-painted image of John Wilmot’s face to show up here and there,
simply
with the line from the movie, the phrase “You will not like me.” “You
will not
like me”—I thought, That’s the way to go with something like this. But
the
reaction was “Banksy who?”

Do you have
any actors that you studied from the past, actors from any era, who
were
helpful either in a specific role or just in general?

The guys I always adored were mostly the silent-film
actors, Buster Keaton first, Lon Chaney Sr., and Chaplin, of
course—those three
for me. And John Barrymore. The gods: those are the gods. And then
you’ve got
the people that came out of that, Paul Muni, certainly . . .

But Marlon, it wasn’t until Marlon Brando came along that .
. . it was revolutionary, it just changed everything. The work he was
doing, Streetcar—completely different fucking
animal. And everybody changed their approach from that moment on.

He was bigger
than—I don’t know how to say it—it was almost like the screen could not
contain
him. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. I don’t know what the fuck it is, or was,
but, at that time—especially at that time—he had too much. And the
shape of his
face and his nose and his—and the distance between his forehead and his
eyebrows, and whatever was going on for whatever genetic reason, or
whatever.
He was placed in that spot for that particular thing. And, man, he
cranked it.
He just absolutely owned it.

It’s
interesting when one individual—whether it’s Michelangelo, Coltrane,
Bob Dylan,
Jackson Pollock—they’re so inspiring, and they help beget almost a
whole
school, but no one can touch them. They have this place of kingship,
but also
solitude.

And Marlon hated it. He hated it, which is probably
why he rejected the whole idea of it, you know, and made fun of it. But
I know
it’s bullshit. I know he was capable of the work and worked hard when
he did
the work. I saw him do it, you know. He did care.

Earlier, you
mentioned those three greats, the silent-film greats. You’re a master
of
language, voice, script, words. And yet you chose three silent-film
actors.

The amazing thing about those guys is that they didn’t
have the luxury of language. So what they were doing, what they were
feeling,
what they were trying to express, had to come out through being, had to
be
alive, had to be in there behind the eyes. Their body had to express
it, their
very being had to express it.

Throughout
your life you seem to have had beautiful relationships with a
succession of
mentors—Marlon, Hunter, Allen Ginsberg. You hold these people with you.
Is that
something that has just come your way? Or is it something that you seek
in
life?

I think it’s probably a combination. It’s never been a
conscious sort of searching, but it did happen with these guys. The
combination
probably goes back to memories of my grandfather. We were very, very
close, and
I lost him. I was about nine.

Is it your
grandfather you have tattooed on your arm?

Yeah, Jim. He was a wonderful model. He drove a bus
during the day and ran moonshine at night. He was a Robert Mitchum
type, a man’s
man. He just said things as they were. He’d call a spade a spade—and
piss on
you if you don’t like it. He was also of a different era—I mean, a
radically
different era, as were some of the other guys that we’ve talked about,
like
Marlon and Hunter, and even Keith [Richards] to some degree, and Allen
certainly. I really believe it was a better time. I really believe
that, at a
certain point, if you’re born in ‘60-something or whatever, you got
ripped
off—you know what I mean? I always felt like I was meant to have been
born in
another era, another time.

I was thinking
back on Edward Scissorhands—he has this father figure and mentor,
Vincent Price’s
character. You told me a story once about Vincent Price.

We were doing Scissorhands
and Vincent was playing the inventor—essentially my father in the film.
And he
was a decent man. He was able to move around. He was cool. He was old.

Was that his
last film?

I think it was, yes. I think it was his last.

Such a
beautiful film to end with.

And the same kind of genre that he dwelled in for a
long time. I adored him. As did Tim, a long time before me. So we spent
time
together, hung out. I was totally enamored. And I had this volume of
Edgar
Allan Poe, Tales of Mystery and
Imagination, that I wanted to show him, just show him, you
know, because I
love the illustrations by Harry Clarke. I brought it to Vincent, and we
were
sitting in his trailer. He says, Oh, yes, this is wonderful, it’s a
wonderful
book. He was leafing beautifully through these great heavy pages. And
he found
“The Tomb of Ligeia” and started to read from it. And he read about
half a page
aloud, maybe. And then he closed the book and continued. He knew it
verbatim.

Speaking of
books, I was thinking about the letters and manuscripts you have—Dylan
Thomas,
Kerouac, Rimbaud. Can you remember the first of these that you obtained
and how
that came about?

It was 1991, and I was finishing a film called Arizona
Dream in New York. And I wanted
to take a trip to Lowell, Massachusetts, to see Kerouac’s town. I’d
read
everything and been inundated with the Kerouac thing. And so I went
there and
hooked up with John Sampas, who is Kerouac’s wife’s brother. We talked.
He took
me around the town. We went to various bars and went to his house,
spent a
couple of days like that. At the time it was prior to all that stuff
being sold
off.

He gave me access, total access, to Kerouac’s things. He
just opened up—bam! I read the Book of
Dreams that was under his bed. I read it cover to cover.
There it was, like
right there in front of me.

In his
handwriting?

Handwriting, watercolors—the Book of Dreams.
It was right there, little notepads, tiny little
steno notebooks that he carried in his back pocket. I read, cover to
cover, as
many as I could. And opened up suitcases of his that hadn’t been opened
for
years. All these amazing things.

John Sampas gave me a coat so we could walk to the cemetery
to visit Kerouac’s grave. And the coat he put on me was Jack’s. A black
raincoat, three-quarter length, slight check in it. I reached into the
pockets.
In the right-hand pocket there was a tissue, just some old wadded-up
tissue.
And on the left-hand side there was an old matchbook. And I thought,
you know,
O.K., I’ve touched these. It’s like the Smithsonian Institution was in
my
pockets, you know?

You must’ve
felt like you fell down your own rabbit hole.

I was happy not to leave. I was happy to stay there.

Are you
reading anything right now? Well, you’re always reading, so I should
say, what
are you reading right now?

Between scripts I’m reading The Thin Man,
the Dashiell Hammett book, to see what we can mine
from it. That’s something that would be Rob [Marshall] directing and me
playing
the Nick part. My hope is that PenÚlope [Cruz] would play the part of
Nora.

And what
script are you reading?

The most recent draft of Dark Shadows.
That’s something I want to do. The script is close
now, really close, and, you know, it’s just a question of myself and
Tim and
the writer, basically the three of us, getting together and signing off
on
various scenarios. But it’s really gotten good. In the last three
weeks, it’s
gotten fuckin’ good.

Do you ever
think of doing plays? I think it would be wonderful to see you work
live.

I do, I do, I do. The bitter pill that I swallowed was
with Marlon, who asked how many movies I did a year. And I said, I
don’t
know—three? He said, You ought to slow down, kid. You’ve got to slow
down ‘cause
we only have so many faces in our pockets.

And then he went on to say, Why don’t you just take a year
and go and study Shakespeare, or go and study Hamlet. Go and work on
Hamlet and
play that part. Play that part before you’re too old. I thought, Well,
yeah,
yeah, I know Hamlet. Great. What a great part, great play, you know,
this and
that.

And then the killer came. He said, “I never did it. I never
got the chance to do it. Why don’t you go and do it?” He
was the one that should’ve done it, and he didn’t. He didn’t. So
what he was trying to tell me was: play that fucking part, man. Play
that part
before you’re too long in the tooth. Play it. And I would like to. I’d
really,
really like to.

Patti Smith

For her first contribution to Vanity
Fair, singer-songwriter and artist Patti Smith interviewed
her friend
Johnny Depp. They met three years ago when Depp showed up backstage at
one of
her concerts, and a deep kinship was ignited. “I can sit and talk to
Johnny
about everything from Glenn Gould to steel guitars to French poetry,”
Smith
says. Just Kids, Smith’s memoir
centered on art, youth, and Robert Mapplethorpe, won the 2010 National
Book
Award for nonfiction.